


devotion in the dreaming

by glowingjellyfishtreelights



Category: Rune Factory 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-25 00:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21108524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowingjellyfishtreelights/pseuds/glowingjellyfishtreelights
Summary: Ambrosia sleeps, deep in her wild forest.Thunderbolt rages, imprisoned alone in a cage of crumbling stone.Marionetta dances on a stage of old wood and dry-rotting velvet.And Sarcophagus waits, silently, endlessly, in the dark.Things are about to change.





	devotion in the dreaming

Ambrosia sleeps.

Ambrosia sleeps and dreams, curled up tightly in her cocoon. She is small and young and weak compared to the other three huge concentrations of rune energy she can so faintly sense, but she’s still worlds stronger than the flickering, dying source she can feel so very close by.

It makes her heart ache. She can no longer remember why.

Time flows by. She doesn’t notice, can’t notice; she can only dream, using those dreams to infuse the runes she bleeds out into the world. 

She dreams of flight more than anything. Sometimes, when she stirs, she could swear something soft brushes against her skin, skin that seems to be shifting and changing and growing.

Ambrosia is content.

The runes she makes become saturated with her nature, very quickly- Ambrosia had put everything she had into creating runes, as soon as possible. She wasn’t sure why, other than it was  _ important _ \- and soon, her runes, warm and gentle, mingle and smooth out the sharpness of the ones aggressively crackling and pulsing out from a place where damp moss and lichen spark and burn almost daily; they dance around and coax the faint, aimlessly drifting ones that come from a place where dusty mold and vines grow undisturbed into life, convincing them to follow and play and invigorate; and they carefully, respectfully, swirl among the group of strong, yet wearing thin runes emanated from a place where no sunlight reaches, where no plants grow, runes that steadily become more and more jumbled and confused and faltering as the centuries pass.

Ambrosia is at peace. 

Nobody comes this deep into her forest. She discovers by accident how to connect to the butterflies that flock to her, showing her what they see in her dreams. Monsters come. Monsters live. Monsters leave. Humans come. Humans leave. Ambrosia can now feel her body changing, still curled up in her protective pupa. She could leave, now, she knows, yet every time the drowsy thought crosses her mind, something in her mind screams a vehement denial.

It’s so incredibly crucial she stays in her clearing, in the deepest part of the forest.

She wishes she knows why, but less each time the thought rises. And eventually, as time blurs and passes, she stops thinking altogether, and simply sleeps.

But one day she starts awake, really, truly  _ awake _ for the first time, her mind feeling disconnected and disoriented, when something hits the side of her haven, hard enough to make it  _ crack _ .

Ambrosia reaches out desperately to her butterflies, scrambling for knowledge, trying to find out  _ what is going on _ , but without being able to dream and think as they do, all she gets is confusion and a hazy identification of  _ human _ .

Her pupa is pierced by something sharp and metal, and Ambrosia feels it graze her… hand? Did she have hands…? And before she can do anything else, energy floods her body, and all she can feel is an urge, an  _ order  _ to  _ protect _ .

Ambrosia tears her way out of her cocoon with a screech that is in no way human, large, petal-like wings snapping out and drying in an instant, vines growing out of her legs and arms twisting like thorny snakes.

She locks her eyes- her yellow, multi-faceted, hundreds of compound eyes- onto… a human female.

The human is half-crouched, a sword in one hand coated in ichor, her pigtails as green as young leaves just starting to uncurl. Shock and determination is mingling on her face.

Ambrosia  _ doesn’t care _ what the human is feeling, unless it’s a desire to leave her forest as fast as her legs can take her.

Ambrosia lashes out, a hard kick to the ribs, and sends the human flying, smashing her against a huge, old tree that hadn’t existed when she-

When she… did what?

Ambrosia is distracted by the sudden, insistent question, by the dizzying clarity of her mind after centuries of misty dreams, long enough for the human to recover, and finds her sword cutting deep into her side.

Ambrosia screams in pure outrage, flailing her fists and kicking her feet in mid-air, flapping her wings hard and shedding spores on sheer instinct, and butterflies swarm out and fly in a tempest of colored wings, and they’re changing and morphing as Ambroisa  _ yanks _ on her runes, trying to get them to  _ get rid _ of this interloper so she can sleep again, wings turning hard and sharp as razors-

Another bright line of pain, this time narrowly missing her sensitive and delicate wings.

And Ambrosia has had  _ enough _ .

Her vision is almost crimson, she is so enraged. How  _ dare _ she? How dare anyone, anybeing, anything try to destroy her tranquility?! How dare anyone prevent her from protecting-

Protecting?

Yes, that’s what she’s supposed to do. Protect… what? She’s been sleeping so long…

Her screams makes the leaves tremble as the sword bites into her wings. No. No! Not her wings, her flight!

Protection.

She has to- she has to protect…

Protect…

Ambrosia falls.

She feels her wings disintegrate, two tiny little lines of warmth fluttering and nestling under her skin over her shoulder blades. Her body shrinks. Her hair sheds the hard shell formed over soft, short green locks, her eyes reduce and change, her antennae morphing from long, sharp ovals to tiny, flexible lines that look more like hair.

Ambrosia ceases to think.

All that is left is Amber.

Amber blinks slowly up at the blue sky and giggles weakly at the funny shocked-face of the strange-yet-familar girl with green pigtails leaning over her, grass prickling at her exposed hands and back of her legs from the knees down, and tries to figure out why she feels like she should be crying over the loss of something precious.

Thunderbolt rages.

Thunderbolt rages and resents and has never been able to remember why, but he doesn’t care, nor does he try. He paces, he rears and screams, he lashes out at anything, at nothing, confined to a square of old, crumbling stone surrounded by water that crackles as he sheds electricity from his skin.

The ground under his hooves rattle and move when he pounds the rock, because it’s coated in rusting armor and shattered bones and fragments of monster drops, left behind by those who dare to trespass, who dare to try to take down the wild black horse standing unprotected, all alone, on a shrinking island of stone.

(It was new once, when he first saw it, finally allowed outside of the shed, all polished and pretty, freshly made just to imprison him within-

And Thunderbolt forces rational thought from his mind, opting for a wave of blinding rage to turn his vision red, and when he halts his rampage at last, exhausted and panting, he is too tired to remember why he can feel the sore, nagging ache of betrayal faintly mingling with his ever-present resentful anger.)

Thunderbolt never really bothers to  _ think _ as the years fly by, because thinking meant hurting, and it was so much  _ easier _ to just fight and destroy senselessly instead, but some things needed no thought.

He lets his life force drain out of him and form into rune energy, and he knows that it is important that he does so, no matter what. (Because she had been kind to him, and she didn’t have to. It wasn’t her fault that he was picked for-) And the runes are different, for some reason, than the others that permeate the air, but Thunderbolt can’t attack them and wouldn’t if he could, so he doesn’t dwell on them.

(He does notice, in a time when he is very, very tired and has been for enough time for him to take note, that a little warm concentration of runes form one day, and suddenly, the burden of the drain on his life is lightened, because there is an absolute  _ flood _ of runes, and his mind is taken over by bitterness instead of the familiar, constant companion of his anger. He actually forms a thought, a complete thought, one that makes his stomach lurch-  _ so they sacrificed another person for her again _ . 

And then his rational mind fades away once more.)

All Thunderbolt cares about is being angry and killing and and resenting something he no longer remembers. And he does it very, very thoroughly.

He is rarely short of targets upon which to vent. It only takes a generation or two for a species to forget why they avoided the ill-tempered monster, larger than them all, and they go after him to try to become the ‘top dog’ of the abandoned area-

And Thunderbolt  _ destroys _ them, crackling electricity sent into the water, the air, alone immune to the dancing lightning, shattering shells, bones, carapace with his hooves, his horn piercing an unguarded soft spot to send electricity straight into a body. 

And, of course, the  _ HUMANS _ …

Thunderbolt hates them more than monsters, and normally humans have the sense to avoid him, avoid the massive horse pacing and rearing on his isolated isle, piercingly shrill cries ringing through the ruins. But recently,  _ recently… _

The humans started coming in, trespassers, one and all, stomping through  _ his  _ ruins ( _ his prison _ ) and killing  _ his _ prey, and it is a gleeful month of Thunderbolt taking full advantage of their metal armor and golden decorations to conduct his electrical attacks when a being that smells like a dwarf comes alone, cocky and red hair shining like a beacon.

Thunderbolt liked dwarves about as much as he liked humans.

Thunderbolt almost,  _ almost  _ killed the dwarf, but just as he had the dwarf cornered, muscles useless and eyes unfocused, the strong scent of coppery blood perfuming the air from numerous cuts, then…

The little warm knot of runes vanished.

The sudden increase of required runes slammed into him, making him stumble and slip and fall, and the dwarf takes advantage of his distraction to teleport out as Thunderbolt tries to re-adjust to the amount of energy draining out of him that would have been noticeable when he was first- when he first woke, but without his noticing, it became more and more a struggle to put out runes as they were used willy-nilly all around, because the little warm beacon had been enamating  _ so many _ , and Thunderbolt realized now just how many runes had the warm, gentle, caring aura of the vanished source, how they were slowly fading out, how no more were being produced.

How?

_ How?! _

For a clear week, all the monsters hide and cower, because Thunderbolt is  _ furious _ , screaming and letting lightning roll off his skin like water, and the air reeks of ozone as he lashes out at anything that moves and most things that don’t. He rages about the increased burden of the runes. He rages about the loss of the warm energy source who cared so strongly that the runes themselves flocked to places in need of healing and comfort. He rages about being unable to kill the dwarf. He rages about nothing. He rages about everything.

And above all, he is  _ livid _ about the armored humans that _ will not give up _ .

They still come in, every day, and they go straight. for. him.

Thunderbolt’s days are filled with shattering armor and screams of pain, both his and the humans’, because Thunderbolt has been fighting practically non-stop for centuries, but the flood of humans  _ never end _ and sometimes he can’t use the precious runes to blast them away and breathe for a moment, because it’s all he can do to keep sending them out and now everything is a strain on his mind and body.

After another week, no humans show up, the dwarf stays away, and instead Thunderbolt screams because there’s no one to fight and he wants to  _ rage _ , he wants to watch limbs jerk and hair dance as electricity fries nerves and scrambles impulses, wants to feel things break under his hooves, wants to  _ destroy _ .

So when the human girl shows up, he rears, screams, and  _ lunges _ .

He is  _ infuriated _ when the human manages to  _ hit  _ him, and this girl has no metal on her, she is using her fists and a scaley charm about her neck seems to be diverting the majority of the power from his initial electric attacks he had stockpiled, and she’s too quick to get caught under his hooves. He skids to a stop, tosses his head back, risks a few more runes of his store to throw out a massive blast-

He gets hit again,  _ hard _ , too hard, and falls on his side, and Thunderbolt struggles to breathe-

He can hear the girl carefully picking her way towards him-

And all Thunderbolt can see is  _ red _ .

He surges upwards with another scream, lowers his head and  _ charges _ at the pathetic being, and she scrambles backwards. He sees the opening as she slips on a rusted breastplate, her heel punching through the half-gone armor, and she can’t move-

He gores her through the shoulder, and she makes the first noise she has since the fight began, a choked-off cry, and she’s on her toes, a good five inches of Thunderbolt’s horn sticking out the other side of her shoulder-

And suddenly, there is a loud  _ crack _ and Thunderbolt can’t see anything at all, and his legs buckle out from under him, and he falls to the side again-

And his horn is vanishing, the girl staggering to her feet and pressing a shaking hand that glows green to her wound, and Thunderbolt’s body is cracking and reforming and becoming human, fur to skin, hooves to hands and feet, saddle and armor to clothes, but his ears just become a little softer, gravitating to the top of his now-human cloudy-periwinkle haired head, and he can feel his tail halfway underneath him, and the side of his left cheek is blazing with pain, warm blood dripping down his chin and neck.

And Thunderbolt stops being so angry, because Thunderbolt is retreating and fading into the back of his mind, and leaves Dylas, leaves him lying on his side with one arm trapped underneath him, too weak to move and confused out of his mind and bleeding and probably getting all kinds of nasty things from the floor in the wounds he just now noticed littering his body, leaves him about two seconds from passing out, leaves him at the mercy of the girl that defeated him, her mint pigtails loose and a mess from the residual electrical energy he had hit her with, arm hanging limp, face grim.

When Dylas’ eyes close, he does not expect to wake.

But he does.

Marionetta dances.

Marionetta dances to the whims of her strings, skipping in a comical way, spinning behind the dry-rotting velvet curtains, lurking about the mansion that has long since been abandoned for the ghosts.

She is old. Old enough that her wooden limbs should be decaying, that her stitched frown and writhing strings should be snapped and fragile, if not completely gone. Her clownish clothes should be in tatters. Her yarn hair should be falling out.

They are not.

The mansion is older. It creaks and moans, but it is still there, even though it is made of simple wood. It should be gone, a pile of dead wood that turns to dust at a touch. The monsters with should have vacated the premises long ago.

Yet the mansion stubbornly stays frozen in its half-decayed state. The monsters continue to wander the mansion. It makes no sense.

Marionetta cares not. The mansion is there. The mansion is  _ hers _ . That it still exists in the same state it was when she came aware in the theatre, just as she stays in her own frozen bubble of time; glossy wood and bright fabric, no stains, no dust, no damage.

She is like the ghosts that float through the walls, the transparent figures of the lost, the murdered, the restless.

There is one ghost that has always been there. Tiny. A child, by her size. Cheerful, energetic, and fixated on Marionetta. The little ghost calls her “Dolly” and chatters ceaselessly at her, about things that hold no meaning to Marionetta. ‘Ven’, ‘Selphia’, ‘Parents’, ‘Home’, ‘Family’.

Marionetta wonders if the ghost child once owned a doll that looked like her, and is only following her around because of the meagre connection to when she lived. Ghosts do that- latch on to the hints of faint familiarity, anchor themselves to a past that time has left behind.

She cares not.

That is how Marionetta lives. She doesn’t care. Monsters make their nests in the mansion. The persistent ghost stays eternally by her side. People rarely come in. Sometimes, someone is murdered, another ghost for the cursed house.

As long as everything steers clear of the theatre, Marionetta is indifferent to it all.

The directions her strings pull her in sometimes do not make sense. She follows them anyway. Only weak, dusty sunlight comes in through the ornate windows. She doesn’t care. The living scream and run from her glowing yellow eyes and too-wide, stitched-shut frown. The more aware ghosts watch her with pity; they can sense what she is.

Marionetta doesn’t know or care what they sense. All Marionetta spends time caring about is spinning out more runes.

_ That _ , she knows, is vital. She  _ must _ allow her life force to be drawn out of her, turning the energy of existing to runes and letting them disperse into the earth, the sky, the world.

When she is young and new, she can feel just two other kinds of runes. There was an equal amount of both, yet half were pale and weak and fading, and the others felt… pressured. pulled thin.

Marionetta felt only a sliver of emotion at the thought. She knows not what it was.

She never cared enough to find out.

And so she lived, for ages and ages. She ends up feeling two new rune sources born- one that feels like the storm ever-brewing above the mansion, and one that feels like tranquility and sun-warmed fabric. They energize her, lift the strain of the ever-present demand for runes. The runes that have been there forever, the ones that feel dusty-old with a metallic hint, seem to receive a boost as well. The other runes, however, the ones that have been there longer than even the dusty-metal ones, still feel thin and weak, even though they’ve improved by leaps and bounds.

Marionetta believes the emotion of ‘worry’ would be the way she should feel but does not towards the weak runes. That source almost never put out runes anymore, and it faltered and faded more each time.

She cannot make herself forget about the weak source. She is restless, striding around, pressing the limits of the strings attached to her joints. She wonders why. Why should it matter? It is only another source.

But one day, the warm-sun source vanishes.

It is sudden and without warning. Marionetta trips in her pacing when it happens, when she feels the land crying for more runes and not getting enough, pressuring her and the remaining sources.

She forces herself to make more runes, feeling herself weaken as she does so, ignoring the questioning ghost beside her, as always. Her senses are pushed to the limits, as she tries to find the sun-source, tries to find out what happened.

She finds nothing.

But then she recoils when the old, weak source flares up, and the brilliance of the runes blind her for a moment. Then they fade, and the source is even weaker, and no runes are being put out for an agonizing minute.

But then the weak runes resume, and Marionetta is left to wonder.

Two weeks later, the stormy-source vanishes.

The abrupt disappearance was like having her legs cut out from under her, and the  _ need _ for runes made Marionetta collapse in a heap of fabric and wood and strings as it  _ physically _ pressed her down, and one more brilliant flash of runes later, Marionetta is now certain.

The oldest source is dying.

She doesn’t know what happened to the sunshine- and storm-sources, but it was only hastening the fading of the oldest source. It was only barely able to be sensed now, and Marionetta thinks she should be scared.

She wonders if she’ll vanish.

And soon, for the first time in hundreds of years, a human enters the mansion.

Marionetta can feel the human making its way through the rooms. It never stays in the same one more than five minutes. Soon, it was right outside her door.

Right as it steps in, Marionetta can feel traces of Sunny-source and Storm-source.

This human made them vanish.

This human was making the eldest source die, faster and faster.

Marionetta does not need the call to protect inside her head to make her attack the human.

Because Marionetta is feeling an emotion.

And that emotion is anger.

She is beaten.

Of course she is.

Marionetta falls, her strings snapping and the sticks falling to the ground, and feels cloth and wood turn to skin and bones, feels coarse yarn hair turn to long and wavy locks, garish clothing rustling and turning into an elegant, refined dress, and as Marionetta falls into a deep, deep slumber, Dolce wakes back up.

Dolce struggles half-way up to a sitting position, feeling phantom prickling of stitches all on her skin, staring at the splintering walls, at the green-haired girl who just beat her staring right back, trying to sort through what was Marionetta and what was Dolce.

But, before she can do anything, a certain ghost swoops through the wall with a joyful wail of “DOLLY!!”

Dolce curses the family trait that enabled ghosts solidity when they touched her as Pico full-body tackles her, knocking her down and slamming her head into the floor hard enough that she can see herself passing out before she actually does.

And when she wakes up, she doesn’t know who the dragon looming over her is, what a ‘marionetta’ is, or how, she is told, she is thousands of years out of her time in an eyeblink. 

Everything she knew and loved, gone.

And there are so many empty gaps in her mind, gaps of something that was precious to her, so very precious.

She knows the missing memories were priceless to her, beyond anything else. She tries asking Pico, but the little ghost avoids the questions. Nobody else she knew from her time was even close to alive, and she couldn’t find any of their ghosts.

She wishes she knew why the gaps throb like a fresh burn in her mind, trying to tell her  _ this is wrong _ .

She wishes she could remember what was so precious to her that she had decided to run out in the middle of a storm to the mansion.

She wishes, she wishes.

They do not get granted.

The Sarcophagus waited.

The Sarcophagus waited, as it- as  _ he _ \- had for centuries and centuries, longer than any of the others. He was the first, the oldest, the most powerful of the Guardians; once human, transformed by the magics of the Earthmates, set to producing runes to create life, to prevent the death of Ventuswill, the Divine Wind, one of the four holy dragons, against her will.

He was there, the day it was discovered that her time was running out, that her life would soon end, and a new Ventuswill would be reincarnated.

He was there when it was muttered that there was no guarantee the next Ventuswill wouldn’t go the way of her most famous and feared sibling, Firesome, the dragon of Destruction.

He was there when the idea to summon a Earthmate to have them work their ancient magics to create a new rune source with human life was brought up.

He was there, eavesdropping, when it was suggested that the new Ventuswill be sealed away as soon as she was reborn, to produce runes in captivity as a precaution.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Not Venti. Not sweet, caring Venti, who struggles to remain formal and loves pancakes, who always tells him how she enjoys being herself around him.

Not his friend.

He studied first. For weeks and weeks, he searched, but he could find no other way but one for Venti to live in a way that she would be safe, beyond the touches of the greed-filled aspiring tyrants, above the attempts to manipulate her.

So he went to the home of the Earthmates, and gained their approval, one visit at a time. They had but one condition for him, that he would have to ask the king for.

He then announced his intention to the king to give up his life and future as Ventuswill’s Dragon Priest, instead becoming a source of runes… for the glory of the kingdom, of course.

He didn’t tell Venti. She would have ordered him, in her full power as a holy dragon, not to.

The king, however, wanted the Divine Wind to remain as she was, and was swayed to his side. He gave his approval, for both his plan and the Earthmate’s condition.

A year later, the tower that would hold him was finished. Heavily enchanted, expertly constructed. They would continue to add details and expand once he was sealed inside.

On the top of the tower, two massive statues were placed, each with a fox spirit trapped within. They were there, he was told, to guard him, to prevent any assassin from trying to kill him, and thus, Ventuswill, at the same time.

And there, in the topmost room of the tower that was named Leon Kanark, he became the first of what the Earthmates called “Guardians”.

He became Sarcophagus.

The two fox spirits writhe uneasily on his unmoving golden shoulders. The Sarcophagus has been in this state of being awake and asleep at the same time, for a long while. After those first hundred years, he had become more aware; it was not until much later he had become entirely awake. All along, the spirits, Sano and Uno, had been with him. The Sarcophagus wonders if this is what it was like for Ventuswill; centuries of simply existing, then finally, awareness with age.

He hopes she was never confined in a windowless stone room, unable to move, as he is.

As old as he is, he can sense something is  _ wrong _ .

And the Sarcophagus can feel his hard-won sense of awareness slipping out from between fingers that exist no longer.

He is so  _ tired _ . He’s been providing runes for thousands of years now, and at first, it was easy. But time has worn him down; he wonders again if this is how Venti felt, how she feels now; almost wishing for the end, just so he can  _ rest _ .

There are chunks of the tower- chunks of Leon Kanark- that no longer feel  _ of _ it. The Sarcophagus can read Rune Energies as easily as he used to breathe- in his life, long ago, he had been a spell-caster rivaled by no others, a Dragon Priest, and in his form now, having produced most of these runes himself, he knew them better than he could remember his old life- and he senses monsters and an overall aura that his mind insists is the Forest of Beginnings, the home of monsters, their afterlife, in a way.

He is a monster now, he knows.

Did he die? After he became a monster, did he die without noticing, and go the the Forest?

How could he? He wasn’t really alive anymore in the first place. He was still producing runes.

For some reason, the three other sources he used to be able to sense, three others, he had realized years earlier, after he had finally become a bit more awake than asleep, that had done the same as he, were gone. He had struggled through pressing his senses to the limits, searching again and again for the peaceful warmth, the crackling rage, the dusty indifference.

All he could feel were their traces in the runes.

There were different sources of runes, now, in the same places they had once resided, but they weren’t alive. There was no emotion, no personality in the runes.

It made no sense. There was a deadly limit, he knew, but if that was what caused their end, he should have hit the limit first, long, long ago, far before the three younger ones failed.

There had been a long while, before the first one had appeared, that he had felt tired, stretched thin. The foxes had huddled closer to his unfeeling form, like they had thought the end was near.

But then runes, not from him, had filled the earth, and he slipped into a deep slumber, recovering.

When he woke, he could press out his awareness, and could  _ feel _ the source. 

The runes the new source put out- the runes  _ she _ put out, once a young woman full of desperation to save a dying friend, to save Venti- tasted of dust and warm damp air, and the Sarcophagus drank it in like it was water and he was a man dying of thirst. It was scent, real scent, and it hadn’t been stale air. Her source felt like apathy; like she was forcing herself not to care.

Later, another source sprang up, after another period of time when he could feel them both weakening. A young man who had never wanted to give up his future for a dragon who had lived far past her time until after he met her, right as he was about to be turned. His runes were aggressive, flocking to battle magic, and his source was full of lingering resentment and an overall haze of rage. There was a quiet, painful knot of betrayal he always tried to burn out with anger whenever it rose up. His runes tasted of running water and the breeze on damp stone.

The last one was young and tinier than any of them, but her runes had more life in them then all of the other Guardian’s put together; and the Sarcophagus was including himself. She was full of joy and peace, and she had gone to her fate of her own choice, with no regrets. Her runes were overflowing with energy, because she had, from the start, bled out everything she had to let them grow, leaving her defenseless just so the runes would thrive. Her runes tasted like sunshine and green things, always growing and changing.

He had panicked when they had vanished, one by one, until he alone was sending out runes that grew weaker and fewer, quicker and quicker.

He has not been able to sense Venti’s runes at all, lately.

He wonders if her time had finally run out.

His awareness is almost gone when he feels it.

Someone has entered his tower.

A shadow of curiosity was all he could muster- his old self was starting to fade, as it had in the beginning; very, very soon he would slip back into mindlessness, and this time, he may not wake up again- and he pushed himself to read the runes, trying to figure out why there was a human inside of Leon Kanark, and why it kept jumping from one part of his tower, vanishing, then appearing in another entirely.

But then, it was  _ there _ .

The foxes raised their heads, and vanished for the first time since the Sarcophagus had been closed inside the windowless stone room, the first time since they had erected the giant stone statues to protect him.

He felt them possess the statues, felt them start to cast spells, and the new presence responded likewise; the Sarcophagus almost wished the foxes would lose, just so he could see who made it up the tower, but it was impossible-

The foxes retreated to his side with high-pitched shrieks, Sano furiously licking at a ghostly, deeply gashed foreleg, Uno yipping and whining, tails lashing.

The Sarcophagus was stunned. Any wounds to the foxes would have to be done through  _ stone _ .

And the person who had done this was coming  _ here _ .  _ Now. _

Light footsteps. The Sarcophagus saw through slitted holes for eyes, who it was that had burst through Leon Karnak, the person who had wounded the fox spirits through solid stone.

A girl.

Just… a girl. A girl with minty-green pigtails, nothing special.

She flips her sword in her hand once, holds up a shield strapped to her arm- one, the Sarcophagus notes as he floats up to hover in the middle of the room, that is enchanted to resist magic- and slides into a ready stance. 

It won’t be enough to save her. Why would anyone send this- this  _ child _ \- against him, unless they meant for her to die?

If the Sarcophagus had a mouth anymore, he would have smiled humorlessly.

Runes swirled and rose and built around him in a visible vortex. In a way, he was grateful just to have an excuse to draw on the runes, the heady source of life. The runes started to weave… 

And raw magic blasted through the room, scorching stone, rattling walls, reverberating throughout the tower.

The Sarcophagus turned and started to settle again, to try to gain back his sense of self, now that the trespasser was taken care of.

The foxes  _ screamed _ an alarm as a sword punched through the Sarcophagus’ back, jutting out again at the front.

And for the first time in a long time, he  _ felt _ .

He felt  _ pain _ .

And with the pain, his last remnants, the last traces of his awareness, evaporated like a water droplet when hit with a fireball.

His last thought, as an involuntary, unearthly, and entirely inhuman screech filled the room, coming from him, was a grudging  _ Well, girl, I’ll give you this- you’ve got a one heck of reckless streak. _

And the world is consumed by red.

When he wakes, it is to be surrounded by white, and he has a body again.

He lies there, motionless even as something tiny lands in his empty upturned hand, trying to remember how to move the body he had as Leon, not the shell known as the Sarcophagus, which had no feet, no hands, no muscles.

But his years as the Sarcophagus are becoming fuzzier and fainter, and suddenly, he is straining to remember how he moved at all, not just as his not-quite human form, with his large ears topping his pale blue hair and fluffy tail twitching underneath him, but somehow he manages to sit up, hand curling loosely about the tiny object that landed in the palm of his hand not holding his peacock-feather fan (a ring?) and looking about.

“Leon.”

The girl.

The girl is speaking to him, and she’s clearly taken a beating- burns and cuts and bruises litter her body- but she’s smiling at him as she talks, and all he can do is stare, practically gaping as she explains absolutely nothing.

And she’s crying. She’s smiling and crying as she tells him to give Venti (Venti’s  _ still alive _ , is all his muddled mind can focus on, it’s been centuries and she’s  _ still here, _ they found the solution that he couldn’t, they must have) her final message, and as he tries to demand how, if he can get out, she can’t, when she utters “Aria” and suddenly he’s slamming into cold tile, the wind knocked out of him, and he looks up to see-

_ Venti _ .

… She’s grown.

That’s all he can focus on, staring at the dragon that, from the last time he’d seen her, has tripled in height, and remembers when, long, long ago, she had told him that his lifespan would have passed a thousand times over if she was to reach her full growth without selfishly hoarding the runes.

It has. She has.

For once in his life, Leon is at a loss for what to do.

Venti gives him a razor-sharp grin, taking obvious enjoyment in his speechlessness, and starts talking, and Leon listens as she tells him about how a Earthmate fell from the sky, became a princess, and saved the Guardians from their fate.

In return, he tells her the Earthmate’s- Frey’s- last words.

And starts to grin as Venti stares blankly at him for a moment, then breaks out into a torrent of outraged words, many of which he can’t understand, but can guess the meaning of very easily.

Oh, he had missed this.

Frey tilts her head back, closes her eyes, and feels the runes swirl around her skin.

She was ready to give up everything. She only has a year’s worth of memories, after all, and these people meant the world to Venti.

But now, in the white expanse between the Forest of Beginnings and Leon Kanark…

She doesn’t want to anymore.

She wants to work on her farm. She wants to play with her monsters. She wants to explore the dungeons. She wants to pop up and annoy Venti while smuggling her homemade pancakes in the middle of the night, formally presenting her golden veggies in the day just to tweak her tail.

She doesn’t want to be trapped in the blank whiteness.

But she is.

And she did it to herself.

“And just  _ what _ do you think you’re doing?” 

Frey’s eyes pop open, and she stares incredulously at a figure she never thought she’d see again, who was looking absolutely irritated and 100%  _ done _ .

“ _ Venti?! _ ”

  
  


Ventuswill has had it up to  _ here _ with reckless humans with no self-preservation instincts.

It’s ridiculous! First it was her Guardians, with Leon going behind her back in order to ‘save’ her from the natural cycle of life- and oh, how she had raged and mourned when she learned what her most insolent, strong-willed priest had done- Dolce coming about a thousand years later, and despite her resolve not to get attached to mortals, the little wide-eyed pink-haired girl terrified by the ghosts that followed her found a way to her heart, and broke it again when she ran off in the night and became the next Guardian when she found that ‘Ven’ was, once more, dying.

Then, of course, poor Dylas. She had kept herself clear of humans for a long time, but then, she became too weak to even fly. So, as she lay in her palace room, struggling to keep giving vital life energy to the land, the upstarts that called themselves royalty decided someone would be chosen to become the next Guardian.

And they picked a little orphan boy with periwinkle hair and yellow eyes, all because he had the greatest rune energy, attuned to the rare lightning element so closely he could use it like an extension of his body. (And he did so, once he realized they wanted him. Many soldiers cursed the amount of golden decorations on their armor, that day.)

She tried ordering them to let him go, but they refused, and she could do nothing about it, lest she risk be sealed like her brother, unable to do anything but release runes, not that her brother bothered with that... So, she dragged herself out to meet him, ignoring the fluttering attendants and staring townsfolk gawping at the great Ventuswill pulling herself along with obvious effort.

It was incredibly annoying. So when she reached the shack the boy had been locked in as the temple that would be his prison was constructed, she made them open the door, then swept the brooding then-teenager out into the sunlight.

She then proceeded to take him far away enough from the shack that if he ran, it would be a long while before anyone noticed, and taught him to fish.

He didn’t run.

Dylas never ran. As the temple came closer and closer to completion, Venti managed to sway townsfolk to her side, having them plea to release him. Even the king had trepidations, now, and the guard left the door unlocked day after day. The nobles and the council were still firm, but, in private, the king told Ventuswill that if Dylas ran, he wouldn’t order anyone to pursue him.

But the infuriating child would. not. run.

(Later, she was told that he accepted it. That he had made his peace. She could tell it was a lie just by feeling the runes he shed- he had only done it because he didn’t know what else to do. His life had no direction before she came along with a fishing pole, and so he stayed. For her.

But his runes were full of lingering betrayal towards those who locked him up, and he was using anger to stop himself from thinking, and Venti forever regrets that she didn’t try harder every time she feels the sharp, crackling, aggressive runes zipping about.)

And then Amber. Five hundred years after Dylas, little cheerful Amber came skipping into her life, and despite herself, Venti warmed up to the pixie-like girl. She liked to sit up high and drink fruit juice, and she dreamed of flying.

Leon used to dream of flying, too. Venti had promised to take him for a ride, once.

She never got to.

So one night, Venti sneaks out with Amber, and takes her flying. That, she thinks, is the day Amber settled sneakily in her heart, and nestled in deep enough to make it clear she was staying.

But then, Venti started to weaken yet again.

She tried to hide it, tried with all her will and power, but she sorely misjudged her rune-production limits and knocked herself out, and when she came to again a week later, Amber had vanished.

And there was a warm new rune source that radiated peace and dreams of flight, the runes saturated with light and energy.

No more, she told herself. Never again get attached to a human. It only leads to heartbreak- it only results in more sacrifices that never should have been made.

But finally, thousands of years past the day she woke to find Leon missing and a new source throwing off runes in the tower they said was being constructed for the Earthmates, for study and learning and a great symbol of the land, a girl with green hair falls from the sky and lands on her back.

She knew her name. Frey. 

Everything else was blank.

But Venti could feel her power- she was the strongest Earthmate she had felt in thousands of years.

And, once more, despite herself, she got attached.

And it proved to be the best thing she ever did, when Frey and Doug came back into town one day after venturing into Yokmir Forest, an unconscious Amber in tow.

The process could be reversed.

Frey had reversed it.

And so Venti took the opportunity and sent her to what was now known as the Water Ruins when townsfolk came and complained of hearing eerie noises in the night, knowing Dylas was the source. She had wiped Amber’s memory clean of her presence, preventing her from trying to become a Guardian again. 

When Frey came back with Dylas, battered and torn, she didn’t see him for a full day, as he was out cold, laid up in the clinic.

But when he woke up, he broke out instantly and beelined for her very-visible palace, the one that hadn’t changed at all through the years.

He stared up at her, leaning heavily on the door, and she took in his new features; black horse ears with white tufts underneath, a raw, red, quickly and deeply scarring cut on his left cheek, and a swishing tail the same color of his hair.

She had heard that Amber had antenna and wings now, like the monster she had been. She hadn’t really believed it.

She did now.

Dylas lurched forward. “Venti-”

She wiped his mind clear of everything to do with her and by extension, the Guardians.

He fell to the ground, eyes rolling up in his head, unable to stay conscious as hundreds of years of experience were torn from his mind in an instant.

Venti collapsed as well, only able to force herself up when Frey barreled in, asking if the strange man she found in the Water Ruins had wandered over here.

Venti had decided.

She would ask Frey to save her Guardians.

And once they were all safe, she would let herself disperse into a mass of runes, enough to sustain the earth for another five hundred years, long enough for a new Ventuswill to form.

She was thousands of years past her time.

Not even divine dragons last forever.

It was after Pico came and snatched Frey up, having her save ‘Dolly’ before Venti could recover enough, that the truth come out. Wiping Dolce’s memory was exhausting- the stubborn girl had been half-way awake the whole time, as a voice inside her monster-self’s head, and she had only done so through sheer willpower. It was the grip on her humanity that prevented her from inheriting any of her Guardian’s traits. She had dug her mental claws in deep, and Venti had to pry them out one-by-one.

And the effort laid her low as effectively as if her all three of her brothers had dog-piled her at once.

And of course Frey was still there, and panicked. It was just her luck.

Venti just managed to beg her to free Leon before her vision went dark.

She didn’t wake up again for a long time.

But when she did, it is just right before Leon comes out of nowhere, slamming into the polished tile, and staring blankly up at her, clearly speechless.

She may have enjoyed the look of bewilderment and astonishment more than was considered acceptable the behaviour of a good friend, but she hadn’t seen the ordinarily quick-tongued and shameless man for thousands of years, and anyway, the last time she had spoken to him, he had been full of nothing but snark and had poked fun at her and her eating habits the whole time! She figured it was justified.

She filled in Leon on what she knew, and it was only as she spoke that she wondered why she felt more invigorated and filled with vitality than she had in ages. Her Guardians were gone. How was she still alive?

Then Leon told her he had spoken with Frey, and what she told him to tell her.

For a moment, Venti could only stare at him. Then she broke into a round of cursing in every language she knew.

Leon grinned at her, obviously enjoying her reaction. Insolent mortal. She had missed that smirk.

No, nope, no. Absolutely not. Frey was  _ not allowed _ to gather the near-infinite powers that were the runes stones, save her Guardians, save her, the Divine Wind, plunge into the Forest of Beginnings, and be trapped there for eternity. She was  _ not _ going to stand for it, and was going to royally chew out the Earthmate the next time she saw her!

Which was going to be in approximately five minutes.

Venti takes off, flying for the first time in over a hundred years, and leaves Leon snickering in her chamber, using the flight to Leon Kanark to remember how to work her wings. She then proceeds to rip a tear in reality using powers she hadn’t been able to access since before Leon had become a Guardian, and spots Frey, standing with eyes closed and head tilted back.

Venti lands noiselessly, using magic to assist her descent.

“And just  _ what _ do you think you’re doing?” 

Frey’s eyes snap open and widen comically.

Venti resists the urge to laugh, reminding herself that she’s irritated with all reckless Earthmates with death-wishes.

Which brings the list down to one.

“ _ Venti?! _ ”

Or, well, maybe she could just allow herself to be overjoyed. Just this once.

After she chews out Frey for planning on dying without her permission.

They make it home.

Venti restores the memories of her other three Guardians. Frey works on her farm, plunders the dungeons, and terrorizes the town with Porcoline. Amber can finally make her dreams of flying a reality. Dylas spends his days outdoors fishing and his evenings in the local restaurant teaming up with Margaret to attempt to prevent Porco from eating the dishes he should be giving to customers. Dolce finds herself forcibly adopted by the town doctor and nurse, Pico, as always, tagging along. Leon takes an unholy amount of glee in teasing and fretting literally everyone in town, and soon he decides his two favorite targets are the ghost-fearing Forte and enthusiastic Vishnal. Frey managed to trick Venti into being informal with the townsfolk once, and now she can’t go back (not that she’s trying very hard…), and once it got out that her favorite food was pancakes, she got practically flooded in them, much to Volkanon’s dismay.

Venti has never been so happy in her life.

And she credits it all to Frey.

(Kiel, off to the side, nose in his book, mutters ‘protagonist's luck’ without looking up. He’s been saying things like that ever since Frey fell from the sky and only had a sore back instead of broken bones, so nobody pays attention. It’s obvious that he’s been reading so long he can no longer tell what reality is.)

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote this back in 2014-2015? sometime around then. at the time, the only marriage path and therefor the only character I knew backstory on was Dylas, which is why his sections are a little bit... I guess more? than the others. because I just made stuff up for them and did whatever I wanted with the little bits I had.  
I still have no idea what happens on the other guardian's marriage paths, so this is how it stays! also I'm a bit fond of it- I'm pretty sure this is one of, if not the first, fic I had ever completed.  
if nothing else, I find it interesting to see how my writing style's changed over the years lol  
(don't ask abt the title, I had no idea what to put so I just ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)


End file.
